In various industries such as the aircraft industry and the automotive industry, various structural assemblies may include multiple structural parts that need to be secured together. The structural parts may be secured together utilizing one or more fasteners between the parts. In designing a structural part, an engineer may be required to evaluate several factors that drive the design parameters. This process may be difficult, timely, tedious, costly and/or inaccurate, and/or other problems may arise. For example, various structural parts/assemblies exist, such as those on an airplane, where the combinations of the fastener types that may be used and the potential fastener placement locations may number in the thousands. Further, when securing parts together to form an assembly, certain rules may need to be followed concerning the placement of the fasteners in the assembled parts. Some rules may concern, for example, the placement of fasteners relative to nearby edges, fillets and thickness changes in relation to the holes to be provided for insertion of the fasteners in the assembled parts. The rules may depend on the material type of the structural parts and the type of fastener (e.g., bolts, screws, rivets, studs and the like). Further, the rules may depend on the sizes of the particular fasteners and the spacing between fasteners. Current available methods may involve checking (e.g., to determine whether rules have been followed) the location or potential location of holes (e.g., for fasteners) in a structural part after the location of the hole has been selected or determined. These methods may be referred to as “reactive” solutions. Current available methods do not offer a “proactive” method for determining the optimal placement of fasteners. A method and system using a proactive method is needed which may solve one or more of the existing problems.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application and with reference to the drawings.